Immigration to the UK - do you have concerns?

[quimcunx]

I totally agree, but that's not the only reason. I've been doing that work for years and I've lost count of the people I've talked to who've said some variation on oh I couldn't do that. Obviously nobody has to do care work, but at the same time somebody has to. Likewise fruit/veg picking. It is hard work and pay and terms are often terrible, but when I did that aged 16/17 nearly all the people I worked with were locals. I haven't picked fruit for years but I'm pretty sure now the gangs won't be nearly all locals. Pay and conditions are a big reason why, farmers/ agribusinesses keeping costs down to maximise profits - just as in care, vast profits out of high prices but low wages and poor training, benefits etc.

Of course nobody wants to do it, wants their kids to do it. So we import labour, because it still needs doing. And round we go endlessly.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. I think a lot of people who work in lots of different caring professions like the work but not the conditions and low pay. A few years ago we had carers coming in for my mum. All new to caring having lost jobs because of covid. They all said they enjoyed the work but not the long hours for not great pay. All but one. He didn't seem to like it at all. I think a lot of people don't like the idea of it.

I think people like meaningful, socially valuable work best, and caring professions have that.

 

[The39thStep]

My concern would be more for the countries where immigrants are coming from. A nurse coming from Africa to work in the UK means one less nurse in that African country which probably needs the nurse more than we do.

The UK takes lots of Portugal medical staff , Portugal then recruits Cuban, Venezuelan, African and Brazilian staff.

 

[quimcunx]

Anyway the concern I have about immigration is that the same governments who failed to plan and take action to mitigate climate change will also fail to plan and mitigate for the mass movement and needs of climate refugees.

 

[eatmorecheese]

Some spot on answers above.

The sheer manipulative genius of the political class in the UK and elsewhere to attract and distract people from the big rinsing process over the past thirty years has many components. The narratives on immigration are one part of this.

Until there is a recognition that 'indigenous' people have more in common with immigrants than those living behind gates with private security anywhere in the world, I don't think we can begin to accept these realities. And do something about it.

 

[scifisam]

I have concerns that the effects aren't felt equally by all of society. Those reports saying that immigration never reduces wages seem a trifle suspicious to me; I'm not talking about all sectors, but increasing competition in some sectors does have effect. It'd be bizarre if it didn't. But I'm honestly not sure what can be done about that, because upskilling isn't always an option.

Where large groups of refugees should be housed is a lose-lose situation. If it's in London or more expensive areas, it costs a lot more to house them; if it's in cheaper areas, they're often more isolated, and locals resent seeing money spent on them while other essential services are cut. The main solution there is obvious and nothing to do with refugees, really - stop cutting so many essential services. A lot of them were funded by central government in the past, and there's no reason it all (or nearly all) has to come out of local council tax.

A totally different concern is that a lot of immigrants are treated atrociously, even inhumanely - and I mean by the government, not racist fucks rioting. It makes me ashamed to live in a country where refugees are houses in dorms and given vouchers to live on. I mean, it's cruelty for the sake of it, because it obviously doesn't deter anyone from coming here. The most obvious example is the painting over of a mural at an asylum application centre for children because the Tories literally didn't want the kids to be happy.

It's not just inhumane, if anything it's going to make refugees feel angry at the UK, and less inclined to associate with people from outside their community.

And there are so many counterproductive cuts. It's reasonable to expect permanent residents to at least attempt to learn English, but what was one of the first things the Tories did when they got in? Cut funding for almost all language classes.

 

[planetgeli]

Likewise fruit/veg picking. It is hard work and pay and terms are often terrible, but when I did that aged 16/17 nearly all the people I worked with were locals. I haven't picked fruit for years but I'm pretty sure now the gangs won't be nearly all locals. Pay and conditions are a big reason why, farmers/ agribusinesses keeping costs down to maximise profits

Of course nobody wants to do it, wants their kids to do it. So we import labour, because it still needs doing. And round we go endlessly.

Blame the emancipation of women.

That's not literal. Sorry. What I mean is...

...fruit/veg picking has always been ripe (see what I did there?) for exploitation. The seasonal aspect is a large part of it. When I was picking (mid 70s) it was something you did to help your mum or your nan who were on piece work for a basket of broad beans. Women were exploited to do the work in times of much higher employment rates (among men) when a cheap pool of labour was needed for 3 months in the summer. Then women started going to 'proper' work. And a different pool of labour was needed.

(And of course, nobody told the women fruit and veg pickers to fuck off back where they came from.)

So yes, 'capital's' exploitation of the labour pool is a problem. But immigration isn't. Racism is.

 

[hitmouse]

I think (if I'm reading posts on here, and on the mega-thread, right), one of the areas of disagreement is about how much "concerns about immigration" is a distorted/displaced way of expressing "legitimate concerns" about real economic difficulties, and how much it's just racists being racist, to put it crudely. And obviously I don't have a definitive answer to that question, I just have vague "I reckons" like everyone else.
But for what it's worth, an anecdote that may or may not be revealing: earlier this year, I got into a conversation with a homeless person who was waving around a copy of the Metro that had a front page story about asylum seekers being housed in hotels. Maybe this makes me a coward and a keyboard warrior etc but I didn't really argue with him about it, cos apart from anything else the idea of standing there in the street and lecturing him about all the things he was getting wrong before going home to my relatively cozy house didn't feel great. And of course the reason he was homeless wasn't cos of asylum seekers getting housed in hotels, it was because of right to buy and the failure to build new social housing and a legal system that allows no-fault evictions and all the other reasons we can comfortably rattle off. But still, even if his anger was totally misdirected, I don't think that he was wrong to be angry.

(To be clear, the above is less a response to anything people have said on this thread, more inspired by stuff said on the mega-thread. But that one moves fast enough that the actual posts I was thinking of are a bit buried now, and I can see the logic in wanting to move immigration discussion over here.)


Also, been catching up with reading a bit of Labor Notes stuff this week, and got round to reading this article - a few weeks old now and from a different country, but still feels relevant and like a decent statement of the basics:

Viewpoint: Migration Isn't Going Away. Unions Have to Get Sharper on It. | Labor Notes

labornotes.org

What’s the impact of immigration policy on non-immigrant workers? We can preach about compassion and solidarity, but people reasonably want to know what it means for them.

If the current labor shortage has given workers more leverage for better wages and confidence to strike, would welcoming more immigrants have the opposite effect?

The answer is no. Immigrants will be here; the question is whether they’re criminalized. Immigrants will work; the question is whether they have any rights at work.

It’s in the interest of employers to keep a layer of workers marginal, available to be hyper-exploited. And it’s in the interest of the whole working class not to let any group be marginalized, because employers will use this situation to ratchet down everyone's working conditions and wages.

No wonder the federal government spends 12 times as much to enforce immigration laws as it spends to enforce labor standards, a 2022 Economic Policy Institute analysis found. Imagine if OSHA, the Labor Department, and the NLRB were staffed the way border security is, and management lived in fear of surprise raids to enforce worker rights!

If a dozen people get deported from the workplace across the street from yours, you won’t feel a surge in your leverage with your boss. Quite the opposite—suspicion and division among workers will increase.

And when immigrants get the message to keep their heads down, non-immigrants get the message that they can be replaced or undercut by someone more desperate. Our collective leverage is decreased.

When your employer says, “I have someone else who can do your job for less and won’t complain,” the best-case scenario for you is not that “someone else” gets deported. The best case is that you retort, “Actually ‘someone else’ has joined my union and we are united in our demands.”

 

[chilango]

It's bollocks.

There's more than enough "stuff" for everyone (wherever they live).

It's just not shared out properly.

It's a brutally simple truth.

 

[8ball]

because...

I mean post what you want obviously, snarky one-liners, explanations, something on topic, whatever.

Not just now. Someone might come along and read the words and help out at some point. Better that way.

For now, though, I think a good long break from this site is in order for me.

Good luck.

 

[bellaozzydog]

It's bollocks.

There's more than enough "stuff" for everyone (wherever they live).

It's just not shared out properly.

It's a brutally simple truth.

Entirely correct but in my anecdotal experience of Norwegian colleagues paid huge amounts more than me and with insanely positive T’s and C’s, amazing social system, more equitable society, great education and health systems, etc etc

They all still begrudge a Somalian earning a proper living wage in an India restaurant in Stavanger

Humans

 

[A380]

Agree with all this except the bit in bold - migration to North and Western Europe, including Britain, will grow because of climate change.

Unless the Gulf Stream fails in which case we will all be trying to migrate off what’s going to be frozen tundra.

 

[comrade spurski]

This is idiotic.

I think that changing the word immigration with murder could be considered idiotic or even a racist trope considering the fact that so many violent and sexual crimes are presented by racists as being "imported from the third world".

I see no point in calling those who feel immigration needs to be controlled as racist as they have real concerns about jobs, housing, health, education etc. but IMHO no country should have border controls.

However, there need to be a clear political discussion about the number of private landlords pushing up rent and house prices. There needs to be a discussion about the lack of social housing.
There are lots of empty properties that the state could take to house people.
Making a law forbidding second home ownership along with strict rent controls and a huge social housing building programme would make a massive difference.

There needs to be a discussion about the length of the working week and retirement age and how lowering both (without a loss of pay) would lead to a huge expansion of job opportunities.

And a real discussion about a redistribution of wealth via taxes on corporations and those on huge wages along with a closure of all the tax loop holes and how this would pay for improvements that are need is needed.

Then there's a discussion about the role of the state in determining the prominent ideas through the control and use of the media etc that needs to happen.

There also needs to be a discussion about what causes refugees (poverty, wars, dictatorships etc) and the role of powerful countries and corporations in causing these.

This is dismissed as a pipe dream or unrealistic with claims that there a money tree and corporations and the rich would leave or as the politics of envy.

But until that argument is had and won this shit will not change in any meaningful way.

There are plenty of great people, much smarter, more energetic and way less jaded than me in the unions and workplaces and communities who can do a much more democratic job of running society that those that currently do.

I have no idea if this will ever happen tbh but hope it does.

 

[oryx]

Leaving aside the economic aspects, which I'll freely admit I don't entirely understand and which are keenly debated, a couple of things (just for starters) that irk me about immigration from a social and discourse perspective:

• the way that Ukrainian immigrants, fleeing a war-torn country, have been welcomed with open arms whereby others fleeing war-torn countries (Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and many others) are portrayed as scroungers and freeloaders.
• the way that immigration is being portrayed as 'the' issue of the day. Look at all the tabloid headlines about the Rwanda scheme, talking about it as if it was a good thing. People are just being whipped up into thinking this, and the British media, while wringing its hands over the recent riots, have a large part to play in this. I was with my oldest mate and her husband last weekend and we all agreed that we were infinitely more concerned about the difficulty in getting a doctor's appointment, the increasing use of foodbanks, people sleeping on the streets and a host of other issues before giving a toss about immigration.

 

[Boo Radley75]

It's funny, in the early days of Oasis, Liam was the massive nob and Noel was the more sensible one. These days, Noel is a massive prick and Liam has turned into a fantastic guy. This is what Liam had to say about immigration -

 

[mojo pixy]

I think a lot of people don't like the idea of it.

I agree, the gnarly issue is why. I've talked with a lot of people over years about the work I've been doing so have view on that but this thread's about immigration so as I said before, this isn't a point I want to labour. There may come time for a thread on would you work in care, why / why not, but it's not this one.

I think people like meaningful, socially valuable work best, and caring professions have that.

They do, but they also frequently have encounters with dementia, disability, illness and death, confusion, bad smells and bodily fluids. Not everyone considers themselves (or is!) ready to deal with such things, especially on a daily basis.

 

[Cloo]

My only concern is governments keeping on operating this 'stop immigration' stance when it feels to me like we need an immigration-positive approach that seeks to make the best of it rather than stopping anyone coming here which is increasingly unrealistic and counterproductive.

I don't see at all that immigration is behind worsening of social bonds, problems with school, housing or the NHS. That's capitalism, not immigration.

 

[kabbes]

There’s some great posts on this thread and I’d like to endorse them. However, what’s missing is any kind of acknowledgement that immigration also contains an encounter between cultures. And that includes the potential for a conflict between ideologies, values, beliefs, customs and all the other things that cultures contain. When I hear racist statements, they don’t really tend to be about jobs or benefits, they tend to be about the fear of the other. This is the element of immigration that tends to most fuel the fires of racism, and it’s the bit that well-meaning progressives tend to shoot themselves in the foot over, by insisting that such encounters are only ever a happy and positive thing.

 

[fucthest8]

For now, though, I think a good long break from this site is in order for me.

Well, thank fuck. Just in case you're hanging around like a bad smell though, I'm going to call you out again.

As mentioned previously, I'm not sure if you were always a contrary smug cunt, or if it was just my long absence from here that highlighted it on my return, but either way this tedious "aren't I fucking clever for being a contrary cunt" persona you have is both tedious and cunty. Also smug and cunty. I shall not miss you.

 

[fucthest8]

My only concern is governments keeping on operating this 'stop immigration' stance when it feels to me like we need an immigration-positive approach that seeks to make the best of it rather than stopping anyone coming here which is increasingly unrealistic and counterproductive.

I don't see at all that immigration is behind worsening of social bonds, problems with school, housing or the NHS. That's capitalism, not immigration.

I very much agree with the first half of your statement, but I think the second half misses kabbes point about fear of the other.

An immigration-positive stance would, of course, help with that, but there is no escaping the fact that cultural differences do matter, even if it is only in the minds of the fearful, iyswim.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Living in the south west, if I think about what kind of migration puts the biggest strain on housing, healthcare, infrastructure etc I'm thinking of old, white British people not young families who are going to join in with society and contribute something.

Ironically it's the old who then vote reform, read the daily mail as if every copy came with a free vial of crack, whinge incessantly about immigrants. And of course it's our top-heavy demographic pyramid which means we need steady net immigration to make sure there are enough young folk to keep society running in spite of the endless legions of oxygen thieves actively trying to sabotage it.

 

[_Russ_]

Fuck off you ageist cunt

 

[SpookyFrank]

Fuck off you ageist cunt

I'm actually just relaying more or less verbatim what my dad said to me the other day. Saw my mum yesterday as well and she's also moaning about all the old people taking all the homes and leaving nothing for young working people.

Lots of old people are lovely. But as a demographic, in this country, they've no fucking right to moan about immigrants because they represent a much bigger burden on society.

 

[maomao]

they represent a much bigger burden on society.

You're right about retiree migration to places like the South-West being damaging in a way that international migration rarely is but claiming people who've mostly spent their whole lives working and paying taxes are a 'burden on society' is pretty offensive. You'll be old one day and you'll be wanting some peace and quiet and that nice fat teachers' pension 8% of your wages is going on.

 

[SpookyFrank]

As far as cultural differences go, I feel much more of a cultural disconnect with grasping, entitled white people complaining that they're not allowed to drive down the high street at 40mph than with people who speak a different language or eat different food.

The most important part of culture is your attitude towards others, and our 'native British' culture is often pretty shocking for that. It's culturally acceptable in Britain to be an I'm-alright-Jack fundamentalist, to sponge relentlessly off of society and then spit in its face when it asks you to pay your taxes or act with any kind of basic courtesy. It's even perfectly acceptable here in our progressive, enlightened little bubble of internet fart gas.

Do I have concerns about integration? No, because it's been shown time and time again that after a few decades in the UK or a new generation or two, people from immigrant backgrounds end up just as obnoxious, selfish and unpleasant as everyone else in Britain. The system works. Our culture remains strong.

 

[brogdale]

You're right about retiree migration to places like the South-West being damaging in a way that international migration rarely is but claiming people who've mostly spent their whole lives working and paying taxes are a 'burden on society' is pretty offensive. You'll be old one day and you'll be wanting some peace and quiet and that nice fat teachers' pension 8% of your wages is going on.

Mostly agree with the sentiment, but always disappointing to see RW tropes about public sector pay packages used on here. Rather than hints of negative solidarity (in jest?), I always prefer to celebrate any small crumbs of pay/conditions wins that organised groups of workers have secured.

 

[DJWrongspeed]

Do I have concerns about integration? No, because it's been shown time and time again that after a few decades in the UK or a new generation or two, people from immigrant backgrounds end up just as obnoxious, selfish and unpleasant as everyone else in Britain. The system works. Our culture remains strong.

Suella Braverman?

 

[SpookyFrank]

You'll be old one day and you'll be wanting some peace and quiet and that nice fat teachers' pension 8% of your wages is going on.

Anyone who thinks the current system has another 30 years in it is delusional. Too much value has been extracted, too little put back, and the people doing the extracting have committed too much political and cultural sabotage.

What gives me hope is immigration. We need a radically different culture and new people with new ideas are going to be a big part of that. Every time I hear about 'white replacement' I pump my fist in the air and say yes, bring it on. We've had our shot and we completely fucked it, let someone else have a go.

 

[chilango]

Entirely correct but in my anecdotal experience of Norwegian colleagues paid huge amounts more than me and with insanely positive T’s and C’s, amazing social system, more equitable society, great education and health systems, etc etc

They all still begrudge a Somalian earning a proper living wage in an India restaurant in Stavanger

Humans

Even Norway doesn't share stuff out as well as it could. And is getting worse at it.

 

[maomao]

Mostly agree with the sentiment, but always disappointing to see RW tropes about public sector pay packages used on here. Rather than hints of negative solidarity (in jest?), I always prefer to celebrate any small crumbs of pay/conditions wins that organised groups of workers have secured.

I have the same pension provider as SF so must have been jest. Though won't have to wait thirty years like him.

 

[kabbes]

The most important part of culture is your attitude towards others,

This is a massive understatement of what culture is, as you would soon discover if we dropped you into a remote Amazonian tribe. Cultures are massively complex things that define your “second nature”, as Hegel put it. In the same way that the nature of your physical environment makes you automatically brace against gravity, for example, your social environment also builds a model in your head for what constitutes your interaction with others. It comprises all your daily common-sense practices and rituals, the way you use language, what your priorities are and even how you draw the boundaries of your selfhood. An encounter between cultures brings these things into conflict. People are confronted with the fact that their way of living — a way of living that they so took for granted that even the existence of the assumptions underlying it were transparent to them — is alien to others. And this can be a frightening thing, particularly if you’re worried that your own culture might become marginalised and that you might therefore have to acculturate to the other, rather than vice versa.